Workers keeping united with friend as target of abuse (4,5)
I believe the answer is:
aunt sally
'target of abuse' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'workers keeping united with friend' is the wordplay.
'workers' becomes 'ants' (worker ants).
'keeping' means one lot of letters goes inside another (some letters kept inside).
'united' becomes 'U' (as in Man U, English football team).
'with' says to put letters next to each other.
'friend' becomes 'ally' (an ally is a friend or supporter).
'ants' placed around 'u' is 'aunts'.
'aunts'+'ally'='AUNT SALLY'
'as' is the link.
(Other definitions for aunt sally that I've seen before include "Family member" , "scapegoat" , "Deliberately easy target for criticism" , "One easily attacked" , "She's a target in throwing games, like female relative" .)